Road accidents back to pre-pandemic trend, says official data

The year 2022 was the most fatal year for road accidents in India, with 122 per million population dying in road accidents, the highest rate since at least 1970

New Delhi: Road accidents in India increased 11.9% to 4,61,312 last year after a dip during the lockdown affected years of 2020 and 2021, according to the “Road Accidents in India 2022” report, released by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on Tuesday. The number of persons killed and injured increased 9.4% and 15.3% to 168,491 and 443,366 respectively. This makes 2022 the most fatal year for road accidents, with 122 per million population dying in road accidents, the highest rate since at least 1970, the earliest year for which the report gives data.

Over-speeding accounted for 72% of road accidents and 71% of deaths resulting from such accidents. (File photo)

The 11.9% growth in road accidents in 2022 is the highest since at least 2005, the earliest year for which the report released Tuesday gives the absolute number of accidents. However, this high year-on-year growth in road accidents is due to a decline in road accidents in 2020 and 2021, when road traffic and accidents likely decreased faster than usual due to lockdowns. The number of accidents were on a long-term path of decline from 2016. Therefore, the number of accidents in 2022 is lower than that in all years from 2007 to 2018 and less than a percent more than in 2019, the year before the pandemic.

Injuries from road accidents followed the same trend as the number of accidents. The number of persons injured was the third lowest since 2005 (2020 and 2021 are the years of lowest figures). In line with the trend in the number of accidents, this number has also been decreasing since 2016.

The above numbers suggest that the number of road accidents themselves were not necessarily a cause of worry in 2022. However, deaths due to road accidents were at an all-time high both in absolute terms and when adjusted for population. Road accidents becoming more fatal is also part of a long-term trend in India, which was interrupted only briefly during the pandemic.

2022 worst since 1970

The number of persons killed in accidents per million population in 2022 – 122 per million – was the highest since at least 1970, the earliest year for which the report gives this data. This number was 121 in 2019, 104 in 2020, and 113 in 2021. Similarly, share of fatal accidents in total road accidents (33.8%) was the third highest after that in 2020 and 2021. To be sure, this number being higher in 2020 and 2021 still resulted in fewer deaths and fewer deaths per million population because accidents themselves were fewer in those years.

Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Chhattisgarh worst hit

Among 21 big states, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh were the most fatal by deaths per lakh population from road accidents. They were also the most fatal in 2021. On the other hand, Karnataka, climbed to the fourth spot from seventh, pushing Haryana from fourth to fifth. West Bengal, Delhi, and Bihar, Assam, and Uttarakhand retained the bottom three positions by this metric.

Over-speeding kills

The report also lists causes of road accidents and the fatalities resulting from them. This shows that over-speeding continued to be the leading cause of both, accounting for 72% of accidents and 71% of deaths resulting from such accidents. This was followed by the miscellaneous “others” category, which accounted for 18% of both accidents and deaths; driving on the wrong side or lane indiscipline, which had a share of around 5%; drunk driving, which had a share of 2.2% in accidents and a share of 2.5% in deaths; use of mobile phone, which had a share of 1.6% in accidents and 2% in deaths; and jumping red light accounted for the remaining one percent. These numbers are roughly the same as in 2021.

India 10th in list of 21 countries of persons killed per million population

The report also compares India’s fatality rate in road accidents with the top 20 countries with the highest absolute number of fatalities using data from the International Road Federation (IRF). This shows that India was ranked10th in this list of 21 countries of persons killed per million population. To be sure, the data in this table (taken from IRF’s 2022 report) for India is not consisted with that given in MoRTH report earlier. It shows 95 people dying from road accidents per million population in India, a number which dates back to 2006. The same table shows 131,714 total deaths in road accidents for India, a level last seen in MoRTH data in 2010 and once again in 2020.

Four primary reasons for road accidents

The rising severity of road accidents can be attributed to four reasons, said Piyush Tewari, the Founder and CEO of SaveLIFE Foundation, a non-profit and non-government organization that works in road safety and emergency medical care in India. First, “A large number of victims in India do not receive competent trauma care after the occurrence of the crash,” he said. It requires a systemic approach to come together to save a person’s life, he added. Secondly, there is an exponential relationship between speed and crash risk. The increase in overspeeding is due to improved road surfaces on the highways, he added. Third, safer vehicles that are crash-tested are inaccessible to the masses. The safety standards need to increase in vehicles that the common masses use. Fourth, with increasing speeds on the highway, there needs to be a commensurate increase in the road safety infrastructure like crash barriers, said Tewari.